Bradley List Fuels Political Spam

Is Bill Bradley helping spammers?

Other campaigns seem to be using the email list of supporters assembled by the former Democratic candidate for president. Tom Bellanca, a Democrat who’s vying for Virginia’s 11th district congressional seat, sent out unsolicited email this month to Bradley supporters.

“It’s not too late to keep the Bill Bradley vision alive…. The efforts to support Bill Bradley are alive in my campaign for Congress,” the message said.

Not so fast, says Lynn Reed, a former Internet consultant to Bradley.

“I am not aware of the campaign authorizing any such use of the campaign email list during the campaign or in the month that has passed since Senator Bradley withdrew from the race,” Reed said in an email message.

“Some volunteers had access to certain portions of our email list during the campaign as part of their access to our supporter database (several volunteers in Virginia had access) and it would have been possible for them to make a copy of the list, although they were instructed in print and verbally not to do so,” Reed said.

David McElroy, a GOP consultant in Alabama, says mailing list theft is common practice.

“Both postal mail lists and email lists tend to be copied by political operatives who find it passing through their hands. In my experience, it’s at least as rampant as illegal software copying, simply because the lists are so valuable and the copying is so easy,” McElroy said.

—

This article has been reproduced in a new format and may be missing content or contain faulty links. Contact wiredlabs@wired.com to report an issue.

College censorship: The University of California at Santa Barbara has decided to pull the plug on a website that criticizes the school’s administration.

Last July, Christopher Brown included in his master’s thesis a scathing criticism of bureaucrats, deans, administrators, librarians, and former California Governor Pete Wilson.

That was enough to draw the ire of thin-skinned university officials, who promptly informed Brown that they wouldn’t let him graduate unless he yanked the footnotes.

“The university has ordered my computer account closed tomorrow,” Brown wrote in an email message to Wired News. Government doubletalk: It’s a splendid example of doubletalk: Two U.S. senators have introduced a plan to increase government monitoring of Americans, but call it a “privacy bill.”

True, the bill (S.2448) sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Charles Schumer (D-New York), would allow folks to more easily opt out of some forms of corporate data collection.

But it also would make it easier for police to get “trap and trace” orders to record the phone numbers of everyone who’s calling a specific phone number.

—

“Act like adults”: The FCC’s chief technologist doesn’t seem to like the idea of companies tracking which websites dialup customers visit.

Dave Farber wrote on Friday that “if this industry cannot behave itself and act like a rational self-regulating (one), adult supervision will be imposed — that is called government regulation.”

He was reacting to a plan from a company called Predictive Networks, which hopes to partner with Internet service providers. The ISPs can provide cheaper monthly dial-up accounts by assembling demographic information about which websites customers visit.

But there’s no strong-arming involved; if you don’t like it, you can use another ISP, albeit one, perhaps, that charges $25 a month instead of much less. It’s your choice.

Farber later rephrased his comments, saying he didn’t mean the FCC would step in. “I do caution that as the industry starts down this slippery path they understand that there are limits and that reaching those limits may not be at all (healthy) for our industry.”

—

Parody victory: The Federal Election Commission has dismissed a complaint from George W. Bush’s campaign against a parody website.

Gwbush.com lampoons Bush and his campaign, and drew the ire of the Texas-governor-turned-GOP-hopeful last year.

The creator of the site, Zack Exley, said he was relieved the complaint was dismissed but worried that the FEC’s refusal to take a stand could imperil others in similar positions.